Pink Floyd album cover
art work
Below are my thoughts on Pink Floyd album
cover
art work. I was surprised to find that I did actually like some
of
the more simplistic covers. I am usually more attracted to
complexity
and multiple layers of discordant information (visually and, often,
musically).
Anyway, here’s what I thought (compiled from several emails on the
subject).

Albums by the whole band

The Piper at the Gates of
Dawn
- Extremely cheap! I really thought they should have
gotten
Roger Dean (of Yes’ album covers fame) to paint up some fantasy
background
to go with the tone and subject matter of the majority of the songs.

A
Saucerful of Secrets - Believe it or not, this is one of my
favorites.
It is really busy, but, for some reason, it works in this case.
It’s
what I think of when I hear the word psychedelic. I always
imagined
that I could climb inside this cover or decode it or something.
Of
course, this is way too small to appreciate as a cd cover. Years
from now kids will ask what were they thinking making the writing so
small
on “The Wall” album cover of their thumbnail-sized DACs (digital audio
chips).

More - Okay, this is
hardly
original, but it’s such a juxtaposition I like it. The color is
like
sci-fi or something, but there’s a windmill. What’s up with
that?!
With the computer-aided visual editing available today, there is so
much
more they could have accomplished by running things through several
effects
(and, like audio effects, the order in which you apply them matters a
lot!).

Ummagumma
- This one is just all right (the four interpolated
pictures),
but I never thought it grabbed your attention. For that matter,
the
music didn’t either. Still, they are both sort of “natural”
feeling.
And again, this is probably too small on the cd cover.

Atom
Heart Mother - Um, cute, but why a cow? Like the title
itself (you know the story behind it, right?), this just seemed like
something
grabbed at random and slapped on with little consideration. I
read
an interview with Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin) in which he talked about
working with Strom Thurgeson to design a cover for them (I think he
ended
up doing Houses of the Holy and maybe a couple others). Page said
one of the ideas he brought in was something like a picture of a lime
green
colored tennis racket. Page was like, “What the fuck!” and just
about
fired the guy.

Relics - As a kid I had
the
tape with the mask on the cover. I wasn’t crazy about it, but
grouped with all
the others it was kind of weird. Still, I always thought of PF as
a sci-fi band, and this was way too primitive. The blue cover
(based
off of the line drawing version?) was really neat. There’s sort
of
a Terry Gilliam (of the Pythons) feel to it.

Meddle
- When I was a kid I used to have a subscription to National
Geographic’s “World for Kids.” In the back they always had these
close-up shots of common items and you had to guess what they
were.
That’s all I have to say about that.

Obscured by Clouds -
Ditto.
Focus the camera, dammit!

Dark
Side of the Moon - Finally, a cool one. I think this,
The
Wall, and AHM are the
three most immediately recognizable covers from a
distance. I loved all the stuff mixed into this packing though:
the
pyramids with the prism, etc. Again, a code to crack! My
favorite
thing about this was the front-to-back-to-front continuity of the white
light broken apart, reassembled, and round and around (pun)
again.
They probably should have played this up a little more in ways you
suggested,
but it’s a good metaphor for the recording process on this album.
This album probably holds the record for the most individually recorded
elements assembled into a single structure of any album. And then
you can start adding the sound fx (especially the clocks) and quadruple
that number!

A Nice Pair - This was a
good
laugh. I think this is exactly the sort of thing they should do
for
a reissue of this sort: a one-time joke. Not especially clever;
no
staying power, but cute. Supposedly there are visual references
to
other
Floyd projects, but I’ll have to look at this one again to see for
sure.
Curiously, all I can remember at the moment are the pair of tits.

Wish
You Were Here - I only owned the tape of this one for about
10
years before I got the cd. No kidding. Somewhere during
that
time I realized that the actual cover wasn't the pair of robot hands,
but
the guy on fire. Honestly, I like the robot hands picture
better.
I think that, of all the pictures in the packaging, they should have
used
the guy swimming in the sand for the cover and moved the original cover
to the inside.

Animals
- Just for a laugh they should have put a picture of a
matronly
figure with a heart with an atomic symbol on her chest. For the
next
decade no one would have been able to keep straight which was Animals
and
which was AHM.
Actually, for a long time I don’t think I even
knew
there was a pig in the picture. Who needs one anyway? The
picture
looks great without it. I didn’t even realize it was a photo for
several years. I originally thought it was a painting until I
read
the Miles photo-documentary.

The
Wall - As stated above, this is just great. I love the
contrast between the straight-lined bricks and the sloppy brush stroked
writing. Then when you open it up there’s this whole alien world
inside. Before I ever saw the film I used to have weird dreams
about
what the story was based on the lyrics, artwork, and effects-laden
sounds
throughout the whole album. I think it would have been cool to
hint
at what was on the inside through a hole or holes in the wall. I
wouldn’t have gone so far as to place a distinct character on the
cover,
but maybe a worm or a few slithering through would have been creepy
enough
to make you wonder what’s on the other side. For the back cover
(which
is unused on the original album if memory serves correctly) I think the
back of the band (as though performing to a wall in front of them)
would
have been cool if it was executed carefully.

A Collection of Great Dance Songs -
This
just looks a little too rigged (um, no pun intended). You
can
see them starting to get into this era of “shooting on location” that
they
have continued to the present (Pulse
excluded). As with Animals,
the
title and cover are too close conceptually. This picture
would
be great on the inside, but I think something sort of monolithic would
have been more appropriate. This would probably work better as a
segment in the High Hope mini-movie than as a cover.

The
Final Cut - See, this is the monolithic thing working
again.
They put all the wild showy stuff on the inside. You buy it for
the
music or because it’s got “Pink Floyd” written on it, but you aren’t
sucked
in by the graphics.

Works - I wasn’t sucked
in
by the graphics in this case. Whose idea was this cover?
Whose
idea was this album? I don’t know what I would have done in this
case. I had forgotten about the pink paint until I looked at it
again.
Again, that’s too literal for my tastes. To me, that’s like a guy
playing a concert with his band’s logo on the t-shirt.

Momentary
Lapse of Reason - You can guess my opinion on this one: Too
much!
I think this would have been much more interesting as a drawing.
I like the tenuous hint of a connection between the cover concept and
album
title. However, the visual interpretations of the songs are
obscenely
close for a band as notoriously ambiguous as Floyd. I wish they
had
left off the dogs, hang glider, etc., and just stuck to the
guy/beds/beach.

Delicate Sound of Thunder -
This
is another “Say what?” cover for me. Interesting, but
pretentious.
I would have done something that would covey the fact that is a live
album
(though not with a literal reference). Now that I think about it,
this reminds me of one of those performance art pieces. The light
bulbs are sort of silly. Peter Gabriel’s "Sledgehammer" video
predates
this so it looks sort of derivative since there is no connection to
anything
else.

Shine On boxed set -
First
of all, I don’t like the title (too obvious a reference; I’ll forgive Echoes,
but not this one). Second, the cd packaging sucks. The
cover
is pretty, but I think it’s all a little over the top. I guess an
exception could be made here because this is a boxed set, but I think I
would (again) have moved the cover to the inside and put something
emblematic
out front. I haven’t seen the inside of this, so I can’t say more
about this one. I would like to believe that there was some
connecting
thread from the cover throughout the package, but I don’t see any hint
of that.

The Division Bell - I
really,
really do not like this cover. Take the heads away and it works
though.
They could have some up with something better than this. They
were
really stretching to make a reference to the album title. How
about
something to do with computers, mathematics, fractions, whatever?
Stone heads, I don’t think so. Ironically, this is a case where
they
did follow through (somewhat) with the two faces theme inside the
packaging.
I would like to hear them do that musically again since they really
haven’t
done that again since The Wall
(similar rhythm guitar tracks on
otherwise
unrelated songs, multiple part songs, using the melody from "Another
Brick"
as the bass line for several songs, lyrical references elements of
other
songs (Worm, Your Honour, in The Trial; Mother, did it need to be so
high;
Empty Spaces as in the wall metaphor, etc.). Of course, that was
why The Wall is considered a
masterpiece and people say, “Atom Heart
what?”

PULSE - Finally, a cool
one.
They aren’t too blatant about referencing elements of Floyd’s
history.
Subtle at last! The blinking light on the other hand… I
hope
this represents a new phase of cover art for the band, although at
their
present rate of output they’ll be lucky to turn out more than another
two
albums in their lifetime.

Is There Anybody Out There? -
I
like it well enough.

Roger
Waters solo albums:

Pros
and Cons of Hitchhiking - Cute as the hitchhiker is, this is
a silly cover. This just doesn’t gel with the music for me the
way
a lot of the other album covers did. I did like the covers for
several
of the singles. I think if the chick was painted and the
background
real it would have been more interesting. The black censorship
box
wasn’t there originally. However, since they added it, I would
have
added an additional box or boxes elsewhere to be silly and drive the
point
home (cover, say, her thumb). The highway is too plain. The
truck from the cover of the single for “Every Stranger’s Eyes” (I think
that’s where I saw it) would have been cool.

Radio
KAOS - I like this one. The whole design (back and
green
computer type throughout) works pretty well. It references
technology
without getting in your face. Hey, they even managed a “secret”
code
on the cover. Since there is a noticeable (by me anyway) absence
of reverb in the music (counter to Floyd’s past and especially present
"spacey" style) it makes sense to me that the graphics (I won’t call it
artwork) would be 2-D.*The code spells out the track listing
(you have to do both the front and back covers to get the whole thing).

The Wall 1990- Berlin -
This
one kind of annoyed me. At the time I resented the break from the
Gerald Scarfe artwork. Now I don’t dislike it as much, but I have
refined my resentment to the fact that they retained Scarfe’s designs
(characters,
etc.) without employing his style.

Amused
to Death - Stupid! Again they used a photo where
artwork
(or a mix) would have better highlighted the important elements.
The concept borders on humor when the subject matter is supposed to be
nihilistic. A mistake! I can’t see a literal interpretation
of the title working as a cover, but something hinting at the meaning
would
have been preferable. This cover denotes animal behavior
experiments
for me. It really doesn’t strike me as socio-political commentary.

In the Flesh - This is a
really
bleak looking cover. For a live album you may not want to make it
look like a party, but as least imply that the people who went to the
show
had some fun! I haven’t listened to this one all the way
through.
Again they’re referencing old images just for the sake of referencing
them.
Placing a pig on an album cover just because you did that
twenty-something
years ago is a pretty sad excuse. Do something provocative not
repetitive!

Dave's
solo albums:

David Gilmour -
False
advertisement. Judging by the cover I thought I was going to get
a country album. This cover made me think they recorded this
album
in a barn. They could have done a bit more than this though,
honestly.
I thought the collage elsewhere in the packaging would make a more
interesting album cover.

About Face - Great
photo.
What does it have to do with this album? The music on here is
much
larger than the cover implies. I would have used a panorama shot
of nature. I have no idea why.

Syd's
solo albums:

Madcap Laughs -
This
looks like they were playing off the fact Syd was a whacko from the
start.
The bad lighting works here. I hope it was intentional and not
just
a low budget or an inexperienced photographer.

Barrett - I like this
one
a lot. It’s abstract like Syd’s mind. It’s bugs like… well,
you know Syd. Incidentally, the artwork was actually by Syd
himself.

Opal - Spooky. Syd
turns
to the dark side. I drew a picture of this one when I was a kid
and
it turned out pretty cool. Syd looked like a gothic superhero
like
Batman without the mask; a guy who hides in the shadows. I guess
that explains his popularity. Syd’s too.

Rick's
solo albums:

Wet Dream - This
is really neat one. I think I like it more than most people like
the music on this album (which I’ve never heard all the way through,
btw).
I can live without the artists' faces on their album covers. By
contrast,
that’s all the Police ever did, and Sting has continued that trend
almost
without fail through his solo career. I consider that a little
conceited.
One of Roger’s few redeeming traits is that he relegates images of
himself
to tiny inserts on the last page of his cd booklets.

Broken China - I
couldn’t
remember what this one looked like. I just remember black and
white
and that’s all, so I just looked it up. Actually, it is kind of
cool
and simple enough to be used as an emblem.

Nick's
solo albums:

Profiles
- Happy Halloween! Believe it or not I have the LP of
this album
(or used to?), but I only listened to it once, and that was perhaps 10
years ago.

Fictitious Sports -
Modern
art? I’ve never heard this one, and I’m just going by memory of
the
picture of the album cover from the Miles book.

Some
follow-up
comments...

I would love to see a
compilation
of alternate versions of album covers: designs that didn't make it, the
way they do with Star Wars pre-production work. There are
probably
a lot of great stories out there. I had never even seen the herd
of cows photo.

My comment about Meddle's cover was
meant
to be derisive. As I see it, the majority of PF's covers fall
into
3 categories:

1) emblematic/monolithic: a
single,
easily assimilated image as with the DSotM prism;

2) photosurrealitic: weird
juxtapositions
of landscapes and such with unusual elements; and

3) abstractions: out of focus
images lacking
in significance to the music or concepts contained therein.

I can sort of see a tenuous connection
between
the title of Obscured and its
cover, but Meddle was just
unforgivable.

I was half-way kidding about the
windmill
from More. I figured it
was featured in the movie and likely held
some significance to the plot, but I thought it made such an unusual
contrast
to see a traditionally pastoral symbol on this photographically
manipulated
landscape that was almost alien. It was like seeing a cow on a
Martian landscape.

I had forgotten about the other guy
on
the Delicate Sound
cover. I always picture the lightbulb guy, and
I figured that was a reference to the light show aspect, but it didn't
really imply a concert situation to me. Maybe if he was on stage
or something...?

I'm glad to hear there was in fact a
design
theme for the Shine On box
set. There are probably more advanced
incarnations than what they did now. I have seen a bunch of
people
use the covers, sides, etc. of the individual cds to make a larger
image.
That has since gotten tired. I'm sure they would do something
different
if they released it today.